Amerika by Brauna E. Pouns, Donald Wrye Read Free Book Online

hear that?” Devin shrugged. He didn’t trust this man, either, Soon the line was moving faster.
    The dirt road twisted through the hills north of Milford, the forbidden area out by the Special Services Unit camp. The SSU was one of those paramilitary, quasi-police organizations that created terror by its very vagueness. Among the citizenry, no one quite knew what the SSU did or even who its members were. It was a hodge-podge—so rumor had it—of Russians, for whom life in the military itself held more appeal than any true patriotism or ideal. In some tellings, the SSU was terribly brutal; in other versions of the story, it was simply ineffectual if not benign, a sort of Mdden national guard that was at the ready but almost never called to action. In reality, the SSU operated like the organization in Poland that it was based upon-—-an overseer group, assigned to the countryside, which never intermingled with the local population.
    Either way, the SSU turf was off limits to civilians— which was exactly why Justin Milford, in his leather and his goggles, could not resist going there. He rode Ms Harley down the middle of the road until he reached the best vantage point he could find. Then he swerved his motorcycle into the woods, glided past the trees, and came to a stop alongside another cycle parked by an old shed.
    His friend Puncher, a big, tough farm boy with red hair, a square jaw, and a sweet lopsided grin, was inside the shed, using a pair of binoculars to study the snow-covered fields in front of them. Justin knelt beside him and heard the rumble of engines in the distance.
    “How long they been out?” Justin asked.
    “Ten minutes,” Puncher said. “It’s a tactica! unit.”
    “Company strength?”
    “Platoon.”
    “Lemme see,” Justin said, seizing the field glasses.
    He observed two black attack helicopters, hovering like giant malignant insects, fire rockets at some distant target. A moment later five black tanks lumbered into view and they too opened fire. A burst of flame shot fifty feet into the air.
    “The same drill as last time,” Puncher said.
    “The bastards are efficient,” Justin muttered.
    More helicopters shot into view, firing their rockets; a Sine of personnel carriers came down the road by the river, and soldiers leaped out of them, firing automatic weapons and flinging grenades.
    “Hey, look at that!” Puncher cried. “What the hell are they doing?”
    Justin took the binoculars. Off in the distance a fire had started, a long, thin line of flame and crackling debris, as if a huge string of firecrackers had gone off. The acrid smell of phosphorus stung their nostrils.
    “A Viper,” Justin declared. “The sons of bitches are testing a Viper.”
    “A what?” Puncher asked.
    “It’s called a Super Viper—you know, as in snake. It’s a hose, packed with explosives, two hundred meters long. It clears a mine field. A rocket shoots the hose across the field, they set it off, and it clears a path twenty feet wide, for two hundred meters.”
    “Jesus, who’s got min es?” Puncher asked.
    Justin shrugged. “Maybe some of our people. Or maybe they’re testing it for somewhere else in the world.”
    Before the flames from the Viper had died down, the exercise abruptly ended. The soldiers returned to their vehicles and within min utes the fields were empty and silent again, with only a fast-rising plume of thick black smoke to testify to the SSU’s violent assault.
    “Time?” Justin asked.
    “Twenty-eight minutes, from barracks to withdrawal.”
    Justin shook his head in wonder.
    “Of course, nobody was shooting back.” “Someday,” Justin said.
    Puncher stood up. “Jesus, I wonder. I mean, are we just playing games?”
    “Hell no,” Justin said. “We know things they don’t know we know. Someday we’ll hit the bastards.”
    “You goin’ to the Cavern tonight?”
    “Maybe,” Justin said. “Don’t know if Jackie can get away.”
    “She’s a princess. Pick